Portable and handheld electrical devices are a staple of modern society. Every day, millions of people use laptop computers, cellular telephones, digital music players and personal data assistants (PDAs). As technology and innovation progress, electrical devices become more portable and processors become faster. As a result, devices have an increasing number of features and more complex menu systems, despite getting smaller, even handheld.
One handheld device was recently lauded as being revolutionary for successfully combining, among other things, a cellular phone, wireless internet connectivity, a media player, and a touch screen. That device is Apple Inc.'s iPhone™. (Apple Inc. owns the iPhone™ trademark.) Although many of the iPhone™'s features had been previously integrated in its larger brethren (some of which were portable but not handheld), the iPhone™ was lauded as revolutionary, largely because Apple Inc. figured out how to integrate those features (in addition to others) in a handheld device.
Despite the improvements in processor and battery power, people often desire handheld devices to act more like their larger brethren. For example, although the iPhone™ can surf the internet and download video, the iPhone™ had a number of limitations due to, e.g., power, memory and possessor constraints that many laptop computers do not have. In other words, despite technology constantly improving, handheld devices may always be less powerful and more limited than larger devices and, therefore, unique solutions tailored to handheld devices need to be found for complex problems, because people will probably desire handheld devices that function like their larger brethren.
For example, obtaining some information and/or types of media from the Internet was expensive (with regards to bandwidth, memory and battery requirements) and limited some devices as to the types of media and information the devices could present for the user. For example, YouTube™ videos could not be viewed by all handheld devices (even those with sophisticated web browsers). (YouTube™ is a trademark owned by Google Inc.) Moreover, even if YouTube™ videos and/or other types of media content (that may be restricted to larger devices, such as Adobe Inc.'s flash content) could be played by all handheld devices, the user experience would probably be drastically different (e.g., slower download, quick draining of the battery, etc.). However, many users happily ignore these limitations, because the users are able to have their favorite content conveniently at hand wherever they go.